


Harold and John Would Be Hotter Than The Sun Together... But Don't Because Reasons

by PrincessOfTheDark (FantasyPrincess)



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Admissions, Angst, Drunk Harold, Drunk John, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-26 23:24:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9928700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FantasyPrincess/pseuds/PrincessOfTheDark
Summary: Avery waited a moment and then scoffed.  “I can see that you two are very…” Harold looked over at him, a small smile on his lips.  “Close.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> This one happened while I was writing a different fic. Hope you enjoy it!

Reese woke up in the morning feeling refreshed.  He couldn’t remember the last time he felt this good.  He showered, shaved, tossed in some hair gel, and opened his closet.  “What would Harold like on me,” he murmured aloud.  “Something… sentimental perhaps, but tasteful.”

He moved some suits around for a minute and then happened upon the suit that Finch got for him, tailored perfectly, in Italy.  His smile widened as he ran his hand over the stitching on the collar, chuckling to himself.  He took it off the hanger.

*

_Harold rubbed his temples, a glass of alka seltzer fizzing away on its coaster._

_He watched John from the monitors he planted around his apartment.  He paid careful attention to the way John woke up and took care of his morning routine.  He observed him picking out that particular suit, which he’d found perfect and insisted he get.  “I will cancel our flight if you refuse – you simply mustn’t leave Italy without it,” he’d said, with his best dire expression.  Reese smirked at him and nodded, demurely._

_An unexpected spring chill was in the air that allowed a cool breeze to whistle through the Library.  Harold, however, was in his usual layers and burning up, but that could be his expectant eyes watching the slope of John’s shoulders and looking for any signs of melancholy on his face._

_He’d never watched him for such an illicit reason before.  He made an involuntary grunt when John took off his towel to get dressed.  Shutting his eyes and allowing the guilt to win after all, Harold’s fingers ghosted over the keys at his computer to shut that particular surveillance device down.  “He looks so happy,” he thought to himself and rubbed his neck._

_He drowsily pulled up last night’s feeds.  Their most recent number had been a technical genius but also a reckless gambler, which had caught the attention of several unsavory men.  Harold had posed as a possible interested business associate, and John was his body guard.  The exchange had gone well enough, they did save the man after all and the bad people had found themselves behind bars.  The number – Avery Jacobs – was so grateful, he simply wouldn’t be refused to show his gratitude._

_Harold had gotten to know Avery over the course of the surveillance, but he it took him a while before he could admit to himself that he could see more than a little bit of Nathan in him, specifically the bright eyed money man that his own college best friend was before the towers fell.  In the past, before The Machine was even a necessary evil in the world, when all they cared about was building a secure financial empire in the insurance business, code was Harold’s life. Nathan was one of his very few friends who understood how much it meant to him and one of even fewer who could attempt to keep up with at least the theoretical practices Harold employed._

_Avery seemed to be the first person on his playing field in a long time, and he didn’t want to leave his companionship just yet.  Together, they spent the better part of an hour imbibing whiskey and debating the consequences of code on an open market, interrupted only by the appetizers that Avery kept in a steady stream to the table.  “And don’t forget about that lonely looking heartbreaker at the end of the bar,” Avery said, tipping the waiter well.  “Anything he wants is on me!”_

_“This guy’s spoiling us, Finch,” John murmured into his earwig, a glass to his smirking lips._

_Harold’s lips twitched as he kept eye contact with Avery while cutting into his more than satisfactory, perfectly cooked, steak._

_“Now then, where were we,” Avery said, swilling the rest of his drink.  “Ah!” he said, putting his glass down a little harder than necessary onto the table.  “You were about to tell me that you’re not seriously thinking Emacs are more superior than vi.  Because you’re going to lose, Harold!”_

_Harold’s ears went pink.  “If you don’t understand the nuances, I can’t help you with that.”  While this argument could get very heated, and truly Harold had almost won a debate team argument at MIT on this very subject, what it brought to the forefront was that Avery respected Harold enough to drop it._

_They meandered around coding and programming for a while, jumping from topic to topic.  Harold didn’t fully see the point to Avery’s very complicated system for his company and told him as much._

_“What you have to understand,” Harold was saying, trying to impart wisdom even as his speech became slurred and vision slightly unfocused, “Is an argument could be made against your system, just simply because you aren’t able to release the actual algorithms to back up your work.  ‘It works,’ so you say, but there’s nothing to confirm that.”_

_“Oh, Harold, I don’t need them to.  It’s a phenomenon I’ll grant you, I know the pattern shouldn’t yield those kinds of shares, and yet my bank account can tell you a different story!  I’ve got it running at the company and have for years now!”_

_Avery had told the bartender to leave the bottle three drinks ago, and he refilled Harold’s glass.  Though Harold was already starting to sway in his seat.  He looked at Avery skeptically, but he couldn’t keep the playful note out of his eyes.  He let out a great sigh, looking up at the ceiling._

_“You okay, Finch?” came Reeses voice._

_Harold blinked a little.  “Perfectly splendid,” he said, giving a little small cheers with the other man’s glass._

_Oh god, how he’d missed this.  Nathan was the last person who he’d talk coding with truly, but even Nathan couldn’t keep up with him the way Avery could.  He felt like he was back in college again._

_Avery clapped Harold on the shoulder with a “Jesus, Harold!  Why’d you ever leave the field?” and lulled his head to the side._

_Harold’s face flinched a little, and he distracted himself by sniffing the top shelf whiskey and swirled it around in its glass.  “Who says I did?”  He said, downing the rest of the drink._

_“Come on, I would have known.  I would have seen you; heard about you!  I refuse to believe that we just kept missing each other at conventions and functions, that’s just too creepy.”_

_Harold smiled, showing teeth.  “I don’t enjoy large functions like that, I’d rather stay at home with my computers.  Really, I’m a very private person.”_

_“Speaking of private,” Avery said, leaning closer to him conspiratorially.  “Your friend, what’s his name?”_

_“Mr. Reginald,” Harold said, his voice taking on a curious tone suddenly and he blinked through it, pouring himself another drink._

_“Yes, Mr. Reginald,” Avery said, dragging out the name on his tongue.  “What’s his story?”_

_Harold let out a bark of laughter before being able to stifle it.  He stiffened a little but was still sighing and swaying as he thought._

_“Careful Harold, you might want to slow down on the drinks.” He heard John say in his ear.  “Perhaps we should go-“_

_Harold tapped his temple, subtly turning off the earwig in the process and covered his mouth, staring in John’s direction.  “He’s been through a lot, but he’s handy when he needs to be,” Harold said softly._

_Avery waited a moment and then scoffed.  “I can see that you two are very…” Harold looked over at him, a small smile on his lips.  “Close.” Avery finished, taking a bite of his salmon._

_Harold laughed, actually laughed.  He saw John’s head perk up at that, while he still had his hand on his chin._

_Avery went to pour him another drink, and Harold graciously declined.  “I’ll bet the two of you would be so hot together.”_

_Harold felt the full weight of the drink, making him sway harder and admitted giddily, “We would, wouldn’t we?”_

_Avery nodded with an even bigger smile.  “So, what’s in the way?  It’s obvious you haven’t done much yet,” he said, stabbing another piece of fish._

_“We’re both very,” Harold couldn’t think of how to end the statement because John was making his way over to him.  He tried to recover his composure, but the giddy smile wasn’t leaving, and he shook himself as if to stay awake._

_“Mr. Cardinal, we should be heading back.”  John said, scanning the completely none threatening crowd._

_Harold actually made a huffing sound and tugged on John’s sleeve, attempting to get him to sit next to him.  Over compensating he just ended up hanging off John’s hip.  “Mr. Reginald, sit, please,” Harold said, making room next to him.  “Drink with us.”_

_The details of the evening started getting fuzzy after that.  He watched himself pull on John’s coat in order to get him to sit down next to him.  There it was, the tugging, with a little intimate eye contact for good measure.  Harold winced at himself on the monitor._

_He remembered insisting John imbibe many more drinks than he had, “to catch up,” he’d very clearly stated, and smiling when John was beginning to slur his words.  He remembered slapping John on the knee and then leaving his hand there, and neither of them shifted or tried to remove it.  At some point he leaned further onto John’s arms until he was practically bracing him on his chest._

_He didn’t remember letting John massage his own leg moments later though, that was different.  He trailed his fingers over his thighs, trying to think of how John’s strong wide hands would feel on him now, when he wasn't foggy from booze._

_Shaking his head and turning his attention back to the monitor, he remembered stumbling out into the alleyway.  They were grasping for each other and somehow found their way to the curb.  “Laughing, happy,” he thought.  He brought up another feed from the corner deli, and watched the two figures, vaguely remembering the words they’d spoken._

_“Do you want to come back to my place?” Harold could see himself say._

_“I thought you’d never ask Finch.”  John made to hail a cab, but Finch stopped him, and recalled the moment sobering him… slightly._

_“Mr. Reese-“ he said, trying to inject an air of professionalism, especially given what he was about to say.  “I… I think we need to address something.”_

_“Oh, and what’s that Harold?” John looked over with a wide-open expression, swaying slightly on his feet._

_“I’ve noticed… we seem to be… headed towards something.”  Harold heard the slurring of his words and did his best to be clear and precise._

_John stopped swaying.  “You are not wrong.”_

_Harold sighed loudly.  “Oh, good, for a moment I’d thought … misreading the situation.”  He smiled, though it was tight._

_John sort of blinked, looking anywhere but at Harold.  He was smiling too, which Harold thought was a good sign.  “I kept thinking I was pushing you into this,” He said, bemused.  “The impromptu peck on Valentine’s day, the hints about spending the rest of our lives together…” his eyes darted to Harold’s face.  “Under the guise of fighting crime.”_

_Harold wanted to hold him very close and tell him that he wanted that too, but he dare not.  Instead, he just laughed.  “I think you were dropping hints, Mr. Reese.  I certainly was, but I hadn’t the right to…”  Harold his breath hitched despite himself.  “This would be a terrible idea.”  He braced himself on a nearby wall and loosened his tie.  The world was spinning and he was far too vulnerable already, but he couldn’t stop the words.  “There is so much I want, John … but nothing like that could possibly end well._

_“And as for unwanted advances,” Harold nearly guffawed.  “You needn’t worry about that.  Besides, if you had done anything untoward, I would have acted very differently.”  The threat was there, if still a little playful and flirtatious._

_“I suppose you would have…”  Harold reached for John’s hand and John took it.  John’s smirk grew and he started scuffling his feet.  “We can’t do this.”_

_Harold shook his head, “Disaster,” but he was still smiling too, and his “s” sounds were slurring badly._

_“So… what happens now?”_

_Harold moved towards him with a slight stumble, tugging him closer.  “Can I kiss you?”_

_John breathed out a sigh he didn’t know he was holding and whispered, “Yes.”_

_Harold came to him, put both hands on his face and locked eyes with him.  He brought his lips up to meet Johns and the world melted away.  He could taste the alcohol but Harold could also smell and taste John, his John, and he felt as though he was drowning.  John pulled him closer, protectively, running his hands gently along Harold’s back and pressing him closer._

_Harold watched the monitor, his mouth parted, trying to recollect the drunken kiss.  It was messy, but delicious, and maybe a touch desperate, if Harold was being honest. As far as kisses go, he’d felt they’d done better.  An argument could be made that the peck John gave him a couple weeks ago had more merit as a kiss, but what was so captivating was Harold feeling John’s need for this intimacy.  He was a starving man, falling backwards, only yet saved by this small familiarity._

_Harold tried to keep control; they couldn’t both be flailing around in the dark.  The ghost of it could still be felt on his lips.  He sighed and moaned, doing his best to remember every detail._

_Too quickly, he watched the two of them break apart on the security feed, still in a strange off kilter embrace and uncertain with their immediate actions.  They were both stopping themselves, Harold realized watching.  He saw himself shake his head, touching John’s face one last time._

_He then hailed a cab and shoved John into it without following him.  He remembered giving Johns address to the driver and shut the door, waving.  “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, Mr. Reese.” He said, just as the cab was pulling away and remembered clearly John’s dumbstruck look out the window at him._

_He got into his own cab, hastily told the driver where to go and then crammed himself as close to the window as he could.  The fresh air was nice on his face, which he kept tightly shut._

_He went over and over the events of that night all the way home, this Harold remembered clearly without the help of a device._

_“Stupid, stupid,” he’d said aloud, tossing his keys in the small dish by his front door.  He limped badly, the drink making it harder and harder to move.  He did manage to get undressed and lie down on his very comfortable warm bed.  “Without John,” he remembered pondering to himself, sadly and miserably hard, refusing to bring himself off._

_He slept, but didn’t feel like it, and woke up far too early and surprisingly hung over.  He was still beating himself up before the sun had even risen.  Harold did his best to face the day, which began as they usually did, with his trip back to the comfort of his library, where he thought he’d check in on his companion._

*

Reese tried to ignore the happy little feeling in his gut.  He picked up Finch’s Sencha Green Tea, one sugar, and got his own coffee, and splurged on some buttered croissants with Nutella. 

He wanted to tell Harold everything.  He wanted to explain why he was who he was, what happened to him, his love life, his family.  He wished to share and indulge with Finch on all subjects, but especially what he thought he wanted to do with the rest of his life and how Finch was an integral part of that now. 

He couldn’t wait and felt himself walk even faster to get to work than usual. 

When he arrived, he walked in cautiously.  Finch was at his desk, looking a little more tired than that first morning John had startled him awake there.  “Good morning, Finch,” Reese said, offering him the tea in their usual fashion.

“Mr. Reese,” Finch said, more stiffly than usual but with the normal curt nod. 

Reese pulled up a chair and sat across from him.  They both stared at each other for a minute, neither one really ready to talk about anything in particular.  Reese slouching in his chair, drinking his coffee.  Finch watched him do it, slight concern playing on his face.

“So, I had some great dreams last night,” Reese said, looking at the ceiling and stretching.  Harold tried to pay special attention to his tea.  “I feel like I have too much to say and not enough words to explain.”  His smile was back and he looked up, but Finch still wasn’t looking at him.

Reese tried again, “You think we should cool it.  I am inclined to agree.”

That did make Finch look up.  He swallowed. “I just don’t think we should.  Especially if we’re going to keep working together.”

Reese went very still.  Quietly, he said, “Are you firing me, Harold?”

“Certainly not!” Harold said too hastily.  He licked his lips.  “I just didn’t know if you’d want to stay.”

“I do.” Reese said, watching him with his head down.  “I do very much.”  He took another sip of coffee.  “You have to understand, I didn’t think you were interested, Finch.” 

“Interest is not the issue, this would be a terrible idea, Mr. Reese.” He said, clipped and direct.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to lead you on.”  He shut his eyes as if that would make him shut his mouth.  “I was just so lonely.”

Reese watched Finch with wide eyes, as Finch obviously tried to conceal his feelings behind that wall he favors so much.  But he’d cracked it just a little for Reese last night, and he still wasn’t done spackling. 

He felt selfish, Reese realized.  Perhaps mixed with self-doubt and anger, but definitely worry and concern.  He didn’t want to hurt him and he thought he had, badly.

“Harold,” John started.  He took a deep breath and put down his coffee.  “You didn’t do anything wrong.  You know that, right?”

Finch opened his eyes, darting them at John, then back to his desk.  “I took advantage of you, Mr. Reese.”

Reese shook his head.  “You didn’t.”  Finch clenched his jaw.  Reese leaned forward and said with more certainty, “You.  Didn’t.”

Harold still wasn’t looking at him.

“Alright, I’ll make you a deal.  You don’t beat yourself up for accepting comfort in a time of need and I won’t beat myself up thinking I coerced you into something you didn’t want.  How’s that?”

Finch did seem to visibly relax and cock his head to the side.  “Agreed.”  He said, the tight smile still on his lips getting slightly wider but the agony that filled his eyes became palpable a little too quickly.  He leaned forward in an effort to make his point.  “You have to understand, John,” and Reese couldn’t help but feel a thrill when Finch finally said his name, “I seem to make a habit of hurting the people I care about most.”  He blinked hard, trying not to remember every face.  “If my friends aren’t dead, then they think I am, or they’re in harms way.  I just can’t… I can’t get involved like that, not again, it would be too painful… for both of us.”

Reese nodded.  “Agreed.  I’m in that same boat, Finch.”

Finch’s eyes widened at that.  “I hadn’t realized.”

Reese smirked a little.  “I’m sure you have, but thanks for saying it.”  He leaned back again, taking his coffee.  “I think I can definitively say that my life isn’t one that works well with domestic bliss.  Neither of us can really say that.  I get it, Finch I really do.” 

Reese stood up, grabbing a croissant and took a big bite.  “So,” he said around the mouthful.  “Do we have a new number?”

Finch smiled at him, genuinely, and got up to put the picture on the clear board.


End file.
